Spellcraft Theory
by Ivaylo Dankolov
Summary: Ivian, an unsuspecting teenager skilled in the arts of rationality gets dragged much to his dismay right in the middle of supernatural central, pulling Harry Dresden along with him. Meanwhile, someone is stirring conspicuously generic trouble.
1. Improbable Encounters

Disclaimer:

This is not, in any way, shape, or form, an attempt to depict the Dresden Files universe perfectly. There will be subtle differences (and much less subtle ones) in the characters and the world. I am not Jim Butcher, nor am I perfectly aware of all the details in the books. However, I will attempt to stay true to the defining characteristics of each person, so that they remain clearly recognizable for who they are, even if a bit changed - well, except Ivian.

And that's where the most audacious thing comes in - some say switching viewpoints in first person is a sure way to fail miserably. On top of that, inserting a whole new character in one of the main roles is probably not the subtlest of moves. It's a lot of fun, though, and there's no other way in my mind that this story would work. Having a rational!Dresden would either be a complete parody or force me to change the storyline entirely.

Note, this first chapter is only from Ivian's viewpoint, the second will be from Harry's, but later on I will experiment with flipping them a few times mid-chapter - at appropriate scene breaks, of course.

Was this inspired by Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality? Absolutely, but only in the principle of having smart people that do not think in mysterious ways and enemies that are not generic "oh, I want to destroy the world because I want it" overlords. The combination of humor and gritty detail is completely Dresden inspired.

Updates will come as I can manage them - once a week for now, faster when I have the time to write and edit. Author's notes besides this one - maybe.

Reviews and thoughts will be greatly appreciated.

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><p><strong><em>Ivian<em>**

A piercing cry with intensity of at least 130 dB broke the air. My ears protested to it, as the pressure on the eardrums was rapidly approaching the breaking point. Naturally, my instinctive reaction was to get startled half-way out of my skin and stagger back a few steps, which, upon later reflection was probably the most rational thing to do, conditioned on the fact that it saved my bloody life.

Now, being in a narrow dark alley at night, and yes, I had a perfectly reasonable need to be there… anyway, being in a narrow alley, lit not very much above the threshold of visibility of my eyes, walking backwards in panic while maintaining proper balance was completely outside the scope of my ability. My instincts, however, did not take that into consideration and I fell on my ass. Right then, gleaming claws of some material that I did not recognize swept the air at the exact spot where my head had been two seconds ago.

At that point, I didn't much care about maintaining my image. In fact, caring about any other external factors was rendered irrelevant by the absolute terror which I felt. Seeing the large, black and menacingly looking humanoid was not a very good stimulus for calm and collected thoughts. It was too dark to see much of the thing, so my imagination provided me a suitably horrific interpretation of it. At that point I would have very much liked to yell:

"By the power of rationality, your probability of existence is infinitesimal."

Well, I didn't really manage it, not because of lack of wanting, but because my mouth had completely disconnected from my smartass part of the brain. The fact that I was busy screaming like a frightened little animal at that time might also have had something to do with it.

The thing reached for me. Up close, it looked like the most objective definition of ugly ever, and never you mind the inherent subjectivity of the whole concept. I briefly wondered how I looked from its point of view and decided on the word food, among other colorful descriptions which I avoided on the basis of not wanting to puke. Meanwhile, a long, slimy tongue slid out of a black mouth filled with razor sharp teeth. I raised my hand in a futile gesture, for it didn't much contribute to the likelihood of me surviving the next couple of seconds. In other words, I was screwed.

Or so I thought, because something unexpected happened. In fact, calling it unexpected is, with probability awfully close to 1, the biggest understatement I've made in my life. Fire erupted from my outstretched hand in a rush of light and heat. It wasn't a very large amount of energy altogether, no more than a small shape charge, but the creature was standing six inches from my hand. The ball of flame struck it right in its gaping mouth, incinerating the tongue instantly. The creature reeled back, letting out an agonized cry and frantically trying to put out the fire.

I stood frozen in shock, and not one bit of it was because of the ugly black animal set on fire ten feet in front of me. It was time, my brain decided, despite the apparent urgency of the situation, to update on events in the last thirty seconds. Unfortunately, the nature of said events didn't leave me with many options. Hypothesis one – I can throw fireballs. That suffered a huge a huge prior penalty for being ridiculously complex and unsupported by previous evidence. Which left me with hypothesis two – I was going insane. Correction, I was already several miles beyond the proverbial border of sanity. Yes, that possibility seemed to reflect the territory best.

My mind couldn't help but remember a tidbit on evolutionary psychology, though. There wasn't much evolutionary pressure for humans to evolve thinking, "Hmm, my visual cortex just registered a yellow object with feline shape, previously associated with the properties `hungry` and `dangerous`. Although not logically necessary, it may be an empirically good guess that… Aaah!" Crunch. I felt a certain sense of irony sitting there contemplating the universe with an alleged monster several feet away from me, but more than that – how do I act upon the hypothesis that I'm insane? Close my eyes, pretend it didn't happen and call a psychiatrist in the morning? The more base parts of my brain told me that this wasn't a very good survival strategy. _So_, I thought, _screw the most likely event_ _in favor of the one I can best act upon_, _I'd rather be ashamed for being an idiot, at a later time away from this alley_.

In the real world outside, no more than ten seconds had passed during my reflection, but long enough for my shock to subside. I started paying attention to my surroundings again, as I was pulling myself to my feet. The creature stood there to greet me. Its face was completely ruined – dry, cracked and dripping what looked like blood, though I could only see it as black in the darkness.

"Oh, come on," I said. "That's even more improbable."

I should have been shaking with terror instead. Strangely, though, I wasn't even a little afraid. I guess there's only so much emotional shock that a person can handle at one time. I felt somewhat like the stupid Hollywood stereotype of rational – cold and calculating – and I calculated that I should run for my life within the next second.

It turned out that this was an incorrect assessment. Yes, I could've started running in a second. However, it took the creature half that time to snarl in rage and accelerate to the velocity of a speeding car. I threw myself sideways and barely managed to avoid getting trampled. It seemed that I was still screwed.

"Fuego," shouted a male voice from somewhere in the alley and a beam of scarlet struck the creature on the left shoulder, practically searing off the whole arm. It looked nothing so much as superhot and dense plasma, trapped in an almost perfect magnetic field. Judging by the effect on flesh, it probably shared some of the same properties as well. Plasma torches seemed like children's toys in comparison.

I blinked my eyes against the afterglow and saw the creature go after a figure in a black duster, lit by an eerie silver light coming from something on its neck. It was probably the source of the voice and he obviously hadn't expected the creature to charge him immediately, as he was thrown back by a strike from its clawed hand – or rather, the creature struck something in front of the man and he was sent flying, but not by physical contact – absolutely improbable like everything else so far.

Since I was operating under the assumption that I'm not, in fact, insane, I decided that it wouldn't much matter if I made a fool of myself at that point. I pointed my hand in the direction of the creature and shouted:

"Hey, objectively ugly, over here!"

And then, through no conscious decision of mine, a fireball shot out of my hand and struck the creature from behind. It shrieked and turned towards me, but before it could make more than two steps, the man in the duster had already recovered and was pointing something towards it.

"Fuego," he screamed and that plasma thing, even thicker this time, ripped a six inch hole in the creature's chest. I guess it didn't feel obliged to start complying with my concept of sanity all of a sudden, because it didn't die. In fact, it didn't fall, didn't stagger, and didn't even clutch the hole. Instead, it roared in pure, primal rage, which made me shiver even in my numb state and charged me.

"No," I said, my voice breaking. "NO!"

I felt something strange, as if suddenly my strength had been drained all at once. My muscles could no longer support my weight and my eyes refused to remain open. The last thing I remember before I met the ground and fell asleep was that black creature, holding its head with the remaining hand. The expression on its face matched only one thing in my mental database – pain.


	2. A Talk With the Wizard

_ This header may, with a probability distribution clumped around "if I have time", be updated with notes._

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><p><strong><em>Harry Dresden<em>**

"Harry Dresden, wizard for hire. Are you serious?"

"Why wouldn't I be," I said. "Or do you perhaps have another explanation for what happened last night?"

The boy looked at me flatly.

"Well, my highest ranking assumption was that I'm insane. Given the sheer ridiculousness of the experience, though, even that doesn't come out with a high enough posterior probability, so I'm left contending with the null hypothesis, and that is worse than insane."

I guessed that he was still in shock, because his words made absolutely no sense.

"What are you talking about," I asked.

"Oh, don't mind me," he said, "I'm just having my mind blown over here."

"Speaking of which," I said, scowling, "do you remember what you did?"

"Hold on until I finish picking up the pieces, please."

I sighed and went over to my ice box to fetch a drink. It wasn't a lengthy walk in my basement apartment. The kitchen was built into an alcove on one side of the living room. Other than that, there was barely enough space left to fit a tiny bedroom and a bathroom. Also, there was a trapdoor in the floor, which led to a subbasement that I used as both a storage facility and a place for my magical experiments. Overall, my apartment wasn't what one would generally refer to with chique, or any other word of praise, but I was used to it. I picked up a can of coke and went back to the fireplace.

I took a sip and looked at the teenager spacing out on the couch. He had told me that his name was Ivian. He looked barely old enough to drive, wearing faded jeans and a jacket which had become dirty and nondescript after last night's fiasco. His eyes were a striking shade of blue and a little distant and unfocused as he was holding his head in his hands. I watched him for a few minutes, considering what to do with him, until he ran he ran his fingers through his shoulder-length brown hair and stared at me.

"Alright," he said, sounding a lot calmer than before but still not quite managing to hide his anxiety. "What happened last night?"

That was the problem with normal folk. They lived in their perfect little world of science and technology and tried as hard as they could to pretend that the things that go boo in the night were all imaginary. The supernatural denizens, for their part, were happy enough to oblige and not have a freak parade in the middle of Chicago, but, when some unfortunate soul like Ivian got front row tickets for reality's horror movies, it could get emotionally ugly.

I contemplated telling him that he had hit his head and sending him on his way, but no, that wouldn't do the boy any good, considering that he had quite some talent for magic. Trouble was bound to find him one way or another and the least I could do was to give him enough knowledge to expect it.

"You," I said, not dancing around the facts, "were attacked by a vampire."

He frowned and looked at me expectantly. Several seconds passed and I hadn't really anticipated such a reaction. I broke the silence first.

"What? If you're afraid of how I'll react to you saying it's impossible and accusing me of being mad – rest assured, I don't really mind."

"I was reserving my snotty, judgmental remark," Ivian said, "for when you had finished explaining. Or do you think, Mr. Dresden, that 'oh, it's a vampire' is a perfectly valid explanation that should instantly grant me the wisdom of ages?"

Precisely the problem. People somehow always manage to rationalize away the things that they do not want to see, even when said things bite them on the ass in the quite literal sense. I wasn't really sure how to make him see, so I tried appealing to his memory of the previous night again.

"You would still dismiss the supernatural out of hand, after what you have seen? Oh, and call me Harry."

"Alright, Harry," he said patiently. "You see, there is nothing to dismiss. Your phrase carries as much informational content, as if you had said that I was attacked by a xizzlebang. Unless, of course, you meant that I was attacked by a several-hundred-year old rotten human corpse with pointy teeth and a really bad fashion sense, in which case this conversation is over."

I hadn't really considered that. To someone unaware of the denizens of the never-never, vampire would only mean movie monster, and usually, a cheap B-rated movie monster.

"Please," Ivian said. "Be more specific – or, to at least somewhat follow my own advice, define each term that you are using and that I would not know the meaning of."

"OK," I began. "It was a red court vampire. They are…"

And that's a far as I got the second time.

"Now, now," Ivian said. "Don't go recursive on me. Taboo on the word vampire, use something else."

I groaned.

* * *

><p>A subjective eternity later and eternity plus one failed attempts, my patience was dangerously close to running dry.<p>

"You were attacked," I said through gritted teeth, struggling to control my exasperation, "by a biological creature not naturally evolved, but otherwise of undetermined origin. Its distinguishing characteristics are a black, predatory body that pretty much any human will call ugly, a long tongue that is covered with a paralytic toxin, very sharp teeth and completely black eyes."

I struggled to phrase the next few sentences.

"These creatures possess human level intelligence, which you can tell when they decide for some reason that they'd like to talk rather than bite your face off. They are all part of an organization that operates like a monarchy with a court of councilors, which is the reason why we call it the Red Court. The most widely used name for these creatures is 'vampire', possibly because their preferred source of food is human blood. More than likely, though, they and the other creatures under that term are the actual source of the folk tale."

I took a deep breath.

"Very good," Ivian said. "It might have several orders of magnitude more complexity than a 9/11 crackpot theory, but at least we've reduced it to a physical description that more or less can be tested."

I looked at the clock. Only fifteen minutes had passed, which still didn't mean that I wouldn't be late for my meeting with Murphy if I didn't hurry up.

"Look, Ivian, I don't have the time or patience to play games. What would it take to convince you of the supernatural?"

"Quite possibly a lot more than you have spare time for," he answered and looked at me pointedly. "But, given the current constraints … cast a spell."

"What?"

"You claim to be a professional wizard, so, cast a spell," he said, emphasizing the last few words.

After the last few minutes, I really wasn't in the mood to argue with the insufferable lout, oh, pardon me, I mean poor victim, so I concentrated and with a murmur of "flickum bicus" I lit a few candles around my living room.

"Interesting. To come out with an even higher posterior probability, though, do something a bit more, how did you phrase it, 'supernatural'."

The anger in me stirred. Victim or not, it was really hard not to get annoyed with Ivian. In fact, it was impossible not to get annoyed, so I channeled that along with my anger and my will into a ball of sunshine a few inches away from my left hand. He winced, blinking his eyes against the new source of light. It even made my eyes water, and I wasn't looking at it directly. Emotions can be a very strong source of power if channeled correctly – in this case, the ball had twice the size and several times the power that I had initially intended. It looked like a miniature sun, which was just as well for my purposes.

"Are you satisfied," I asked through gritted teeth.

Ivian looked afraid, which was good, because it demonstrated that he had at least some sense. However, he broke my expectations yet again when he reached out with his right hand towards the ball. He made it as far as three inches from it before he could no longer bare the heat and recoiled back.

"Ouch," he said, shaking his hand. "Yeah, do you mind dispelling that?"

I let it hang in the air for a few more seconds for dramatic effect. Ivian was scared, certainly, but I saw in his eyes calculation and a determination to strike. He was definitely not a coward. He looked at me and our eyes locked for a moment. I glanced down towards the ball before we could engage in a soul gaze and gaped - It no longer resembled a ball, or any other solid object, becoming instead a painfully white glow, dazzling with its intensity. I had definitely not intended that. _Stop playing around, Harry, _my inner me told me and I let the spell die out.

"Well," I repeated, "are you satisfied?"

"You know what, that was a much better approach at raising my confidence in you, relative to your attempt to explain vampires."

I laughed. I just couldn't help it – the boy had some nerve to be a smartass in front of an angry wizard of the White Council, even if he didn't know a hundredth part of what I was capable of. He kind of reminded me of me, actually, which made him a, charming, and b, an idiot.

"I'd really like to continue our conversation, Ivian, but I have an appointment to keep. Can I trust that you will not get yourself into more trouble until the afternoon?"

"Certainly," he said and got up from the couch. "At what time?"

I glanced at the clock again.

"Four would be ideal, if you can manage it."

He nodded and went towards the door.

"Wait," I interrupted him. "It would be best if you let me open the door."

"Why," Ivian asked, but nonetheless halted his approach.

"Magic."

He smiled.

"Yes, that explains everything," he drawled.

I sighed audibly and asked him, "Anyway, what are you going to do?"

"Oh, I was thinking about acting upon the theory that I think most accurately reflects the territory," he said cheerfully. "I'm going to see a psychiatrist."


	3. Update, recompile, test, repeat

**Notes:**

Another chapter focusing only on Ivian. I said I would do switches mid-chapter, which I will in the next one. It is already written, but needs heavy reviewing, and since I'll be busy with matrices, integrals and other fine details of math in the next couple of weeks the schedule of one update per week remains as is.

One might notice that Ivian's way of thinking is not exactly, how should I phrase it, conventional. Rest assured, though, that he is not some sort of esoteric lunatic - there are several key concepts that shape the character's way of thinking and which are useful in the real world. The story is not intended to be a direct tutorial on rationality, however I will include a useful explanation later on in places where it is appropriate. Besides that, some parts are obviously exaggerated for comic effect.

A thing I'm worried about is having made Ivian somewhat close in character to Harry, but I think the radical difference in terminal values and world views more than makes up for it.

If you're worried about the story beginning a bit too much on the light side - well, I intend to have it go progressive worse as anything around Dresden usually does.

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><p><strong><em>Ivian<em>**

"So, you're saying that you were attacked by a nondescript black humanoid creature last night and met an actual wizard that could throw streams of plasma?"

Dr. Johnson had a very peculiar mix of confusion, worry and amusement on his face. He tried to cover it as quickly as possible, of course, but I caught it. Not that I begrudged him for the reaction, it was just about what I would have felt in his place.

"Yes, you understood me correctly," I said, feeling a bit embarrassed to be speaking of wizards. I ignored that. "What are your theories for my condition, doctor, and how can we test them most effectively?"

He frowned.

"That is not a question that I would expect to hear from a patient of mine, especially after the previous part."

"And it is precisely because it sounds so insane," I said, "that I'm worried so much for my mental health. I would rather confront the problem now, rather than deny it all and one day decide that I could fly because of magic, or some other such nonsense."

"You have an interesting character," Dr. Johnson said, "Have you ever had mental problems or hallucinations before?"

"Not that I'm aware of, and I try not to miss such discrepancies."

"Alright, but - you said that the experiences were so vivid that you could hardly tell that they weren't real. Is that correct?"

"Yeah," I conceded.

"Are you having any hallucinations now?"

I frowned at the question and looked around. The only remarkable thing about Dr. Johnson's cabinet was that it was unremarkable. White walls, white ceiling, a wooden desk and bookshelf of the same texture, a couple of chairs and the ever so infamous couch. The whole cabinet was devoid of any personal items and what items were there were neatly organized with more accuracy than I had patience to achieve, in the rare times that I did have any patience for ordering. From prior knowledge I knew that the doctor had worked in this cabinet for over five years, so the only reasonably correct model I had of him was of someone trying too hard to be professional. I guess memorizing Freud can do that to a person, among other things. As for the hallucinations, I didn't see any green men, or, for that matter, other more subtle things.

I gave the doctor a short description of the items and he nodded.

"Alright, so it's nothing that subtle," I said, and then an idea came to mind. "But, if I'm hallucinating that I can do magic, perhaps I can cause them."

Dr. Johnson raised his eyebrows. "How do you think you would manage that?"

I raised my right hand and pointed my palm towards an empty wall.

"By trying to, quote, cast a spell, unquote, in the goofiest way imaginable," I said, smiling a very thin smile. "For example, last night I'm reasonably certain that I could throw fireballs."

So I tried to hallucinate. Well, I didn't actually have any idea if I could cause one through a mental procedure that I could consciously follow. What should I think of anyway? I visualized a fireball would be like, the chemicals and energy required to make one, and I approximated how it would move through the air with a reasonable assumption for initial velocity. And then, simple as that, it was there. The movement was pretty much what I had predicted, though the splatter was a lot more spectacular. I guess the part of my brain that did 3D modeling could work with a few more variables than me. Oh, and it had some pretty nice sound effects – thank you, auditory cortex. I looked around to confirm to Dr. Johnson that I had indeed managed it … and I saw the horror on his face. I was aware, then, of the fire alarm going off.

"Seriously, now," I said, exasperated. "Don't tell me that this was not a hallucination."

He came to his senses, then, and flew out of his chair, saying, "Quickly, let's get out of here!"

* * *

><p>Ten minutes and three fire extinguishers later, we stood in front of the hospital, panting and sooty from the smoke. The fire department was just arriving to the scene, too late for any actual firefighting. Well, I was more than glad to leave the paperwork to them, though I was genuinely curious what they'd put in for the cause of fire.<p>

"This is starting to be a recurrent theme," I said to no one in particular, "and I really don't hold it very high in the preference table."

Dr. Johnson looked at me. His coat had become ruffled and stained, ruining his pristine image. Strangely, I found it to be a net improvement – a few less points on the trying too hard scale.

"Quite a brave act, Mr. Miles," he said. "I admit, I would not have tried to extinguish the fire without your initiative."

"Please, I prefer Ivian, and thank you for the compliment, but operating a fire extinguisher poses no significant risk as long as you stay well away from the flames. I would rather stop it…" I was going to tell him that I preferred not to let the fire burn down the whole office and cause a lot of property damage before the sprinklers in the corridor or the firefighters caught it. But was that the actual reason or a justification that my mind just now came up with? I replayed the moment of the decision, and then once more, considering the precise point at which I went into action mode. Aha, minus five rationality points for me. "No, actually, I kind of felt responsible for causing it, even though that makes absolutely no bloody sense."

At that, Dr. Johnson twitched involuntarily. He suddenly seemed wary, a proper response to someone starting a fire in such a spectacular way as conjuring flames with a motion of the hand, which apparently I had.

"Ivian," he said, "I find it highly unlikely that you are the type to jest in such a dangerous fashion or, given how you handled the situation, that you had malice in mind. Besides, I can see no way that you could have managed that. It must have been just a bad coincidence – a gas leak or something."

Or something… I gave my brain the task to calculate how likely a random gas leak that ignites and acts in precisely the fashion that I was imagining at that point was. I received a reply that human brains were not built to do 128 bit floating-point arithmetic.

"Perhaps," I said, playing a very delicate dance with the truth. In fact, the only reason why it was not an outright lie is that I generally don't assign probability zero. "Regardless, I don't think my problem has gone away, so what do you propose we do about it, Dr. Johnson?"

"Well, my work day is pretty much ruined and you're probably in shock after that awful event. Say, why don't you have a nice rest and come back next Tuesday for another session?"

It was a pretty smooth dismissal, I'll grant him that. He probably would've liked to lock me up in an asylum or at the very least declare severe mental illness if only he wasn't so irrationally scared that I would blow him up. Ten minutes ago, I would have happily obliged, well, as happy as one can be when one was losing one's sanity and going to be locked in a small room for the foreseeable future. Now, though, that plan had lost potential.

I thanked the doctor, paying him the session fee – apparently he thought that close proximity increased his chances of spontaneous combustion, so it was kind of awkward – and left him. On the way out of the parking lot, I had to explain my version of the event to a firefighter. I claimed ignorance of the actual cause, saying that I had no reasonable theories – which was absolutely correct – and was shortly dismissed.

It was past two in the afternoon, and I could have certainly used a shower and a change of clothing, but the two were no more than a fleeting consideration. I let both my body and mind wander around, thinking about my predicament. It was getting increasingly hard to support any theory – sure, I could still claim that I was hallucinating everything, but there should be a limit to what my mind can accomplish. Besides, I knew from well before the last night that Dr. Johnson was working in that hospital, and if I could not trust even my memory, then there was the tiny detail that I wasn't thrown out to the street or locked up by the hospital staff. On top of that, if the whole event was imaginary, someone should have wondered why I was running around the place screaming "fire".

Explanation after explanation crumpled after updating on events. The only thing left on the table that did on average better than the null hypothesis was that I could throw fireballs. I didn't really know how much penalty to give it, since I've never considered a mechanism for generating gouts of flame out of air. Needless to say it would most certainly contradict a few laws of physics and one generally doesn't go around discarding centuries of previous experimental results. It just seemed wrong that humanity's best minds would fail to observe and document this "magic" for the lack of a better word had it been so obvious. Well, there was still the possibility that I've set a new world record for insanity, but that had already become something I could not act upon. Besides, it didn't have much predictive power anyway, for it told me not which actions to interpret as real and which ones as hallucinations. For all I knew, any decision I reached, no matter how much probability theory and observable evidence I thought I had based it on, could be corrupted – completely analogous to saying "everything happens for a reason" and leaving it at that. In the end, that's really what decided the matter – hypotheses without any impact on the real world were only good for religious rituals and pointless debates. Still, I would use insanity as a benchmark.

I turned and entered an alley. It seemed to be devoid of people, which was as reasonable a place as I could get within walking distance. Looking around to make sure no one was nearby to watch, I pointed towards a place free of any flammable materials and imagined a fireball. It came and it landed in a realistically seeming fashion. Up went the revised probability for throwing fire… and random insanity. Next, I imagined a miniature black hole forming some hundred yards in front of me. Nothing happened. Down went random insanity.

I was thinking of various tests when I heard an all too familiar scream.

"Great," I said, "now I have one more hypothesis," and broke into a dead run.


	4. Motivations

_Yes, I know, it's a little bit more than a week, but to say it in a rational fashion - the future in which I actually manage to get a university degree has strictly higher utility than the one in which I update the story regularly. Fear not, though, for this chapter certainly is a mouthful - or eyeful, as the case may be._

_To be honest, I didn't intend to chain scenes together and have the end result be larger than the whole story so far, but that's how it worked out in my mind. Only later did I consciously realize what I was going for and chose the title - motivations. _

_Also, since the story is now officially longer than 10000 words, authors' notes notwithstanding, I will reiterate what I said in chapter one - reviews would be greatly appreciated. _

_And finally, I promised to experiment with switching viewpoints mid-chapter and it's here. I'll still be marking it clearly though, no need to confuse people._

* * *

><p><strong><em>Harry Dresden<em>**

"Dresden, have you come to scam us out our money again with your fancy talk of magic?"

Karrin Murphy gestured to the exit as she said that. I scowled. It seemed that Special Investigations was under fire yet again. After Murphy had been demoted to sergeant, life for the department was never simple, not that it ever had been. Not only did they get to go face to face with some of the more nasty supernatural denizens of Chicago, a line of duty which has claimed many a casualty over the years, but on top of that, they had to make up lame explanations for the benefit of their bosses, because writing "assaulted by a troll" in a police report would only gain them a psychiatric evaluation. Dangerous and underappreciated – a kind of work I was all too familiar with.

"Come now, Murphy," I said in an insufferably polite drawl. "You know that I only come here to see your lovely face."

She glared at me. On any other five-foot-nothing blonde, you would expect it to look cute. Murphy's expression, though, promised that she would break every bone in your body. Given that she was a black belt in aikido, she very well could.

"Chauvinist pig," she said as she was closing the door, but smiled right after that. "Let's talk outside."

I noticed that she was carrying a folder, but didn't want to comment on it before we were out. We went down the stairs and out of the police station that housed Special Investigations without saying a word. One could never be certain which walls had ears in there. There were a few battered old wooden benches around the parking lot, in tone with the battered old building. No one was there, and the surrounding space was open enough that no one would be able to listen in undetected. We sat on one of the benches, which was covered in scribbles and missing a few boards.

"Is SI in trouble again," I asked.

"Yeah," Murphy said heavily. "There is a new cult in town and pretty much everyone in Chicago PD is scrambling. Take a guess which department is most under fire by Internal Affairs."

"New cult?"

"Take a look at this," she said and passed me a photograph from the folder.

I took it and began to study it. The shot was of a grey concrete floor, tones muted by the artificial lighting. Taking most of the space, the focus of the image, was a figure drawn in crimson paint. It was star shaped, similar in construction to a pentagram, but with, I counted carefully, thirteen points instead of five. It was enclosed in two circles, with candles at every point of the star where it ended in the outer circle. The dead woman was right in the center of the inner circle. I stared, trying to remain as detached as possible. She could not have been more than twenty years old. She was wearing workout clothes – a white t-shirt and blue shorts. Her face was contorted in agony and fear. And there were at least a dozen metal spikes driven straight down into the concrete through her body.

"Who did this," I asked, very softly.

"We don't know, Harry, and that's why I wanted your help. Do you think there was magic involved?"

"It doesn't look like the deed of a bunch of wannabe Satanists," I said. "It's too well executed; the shapes are done with absolute precision and there's only one use case that I know of where you need to be this careful."

"Ritual magic," Murphy asked and I nodded in confirmation. She sighed. "That's what I thought. Can you tell what the spell was supposed to do?"

"This may come as a surprise to you, but I'm not an expert in driving spikes through people. I will look into it, though. Maybe I can dig up something."

"I hope you can, Harry, because this mess is only getting worse."

"Worse? Has there been another killing," I asked, my stomach turning a little at the mental image of that girl.

"Not that we know of, but strange things are happening all over town. There's an influx of missing persons reports, sightings of strange hooded people, and besides, there's this sign."

She gave me another photo, this one of a wall most likely in the same room. On it, written with blood in crooked and twisting letters, was a message. "The time of power-hungry mortals scurrying uselessly about is past. You will all burn with your world, and only ashes will remain. Only ashes, to portray how useless you are."

"At least it wasn't in archaic English," I said. "Gee, Murph, we always manage to attract the biggest lunatics in Chicago."

She didn't comment on my quip.

"How long will it take you to dig up information on the ritual?"

"Until tomorrow at least. It would help me if I were to take a look around the crime scene."

Murphy shook her head. "Not a chance, forensics is all over it. Maybe I could get you in for a few minutes, but not before tomorrow or the day after that."

"Well, then, can I keep the photos at least?"

"Take the whole file, I made a copy for you," she said and gave me the folder. "It's not much, but that's all we have on the cult."

"Thank you."

"Got to get back to work now," she said and stood up. "Call me when you have anything."

And with that, Murphy left me. I considered going through the file, but my detachment was already wearing thin and I could feel myself getting angrier and angrier at the thought that someone would commit such an atrocity and to a woman no less. Yes, call me a sexist bastard if you must, but when I see a woman being the target of violence, some primal switch in my head flips to the "smash stuff" setting. I sat on the bench for a minute, breathing heavily, until I finally felt my emotions subsiding a little. I decided that I wouldn't be getting any better than mildly angry, so I stood up and went to the spot where I had parked my car. My blue beetle, ever faithful, was waiting for me there. Calling it blue wasn't anything more than a nod to the past, really, because there weren't many parts left of the original Volkswagen. It had been clawed, mangled, attacked by a walking tree, chewed on by demons, et cetera, each time requiring me to get a part of it replaced, which didn't match with the rest because I didn't have enough money to repaint it. It was my car, though, and I wouldn't ever trade it for a fancy new ride, possibly because said new rides that were made past World War II tended to break after fifteen minutes of exposure to me.

I got a compass out of my pocket, which was pointing straight to Ivian, because I had laid a tracking spell on him. I know, that isn't the biggest show of trust in the world, but I really needed to explain to the boy what he was capable of and possibly teach him some control before I let him loose in the world. The needle was pointing somewhere to the north, and I wondered if I should check what he was doing, but my stomach argued that lunch was more important. As I was leaving the parking lot, I noticed the compass changing direction visibly. Strange, that meant that Ivian wasn't very far from me. There was some distant sound, I thought, and listened in. I caught the end of a high-pitched scream.

"Stars and stones," I muttered, "he's even better at the getting into trouble part than I am."

* * *

><p><strong><em>Ivian<em>**

I was reminded of Harry Dresden's statement that so-called vampires liked human blood when the one that was chasing me stooped to the floor and literally started licking the drops from the cut on my leg. I made a mental note to avoid looking backwards so much when running in alleys, but that was for another time. I was more than glad to use the distraction unwittingly provided by a trash can's sharp edge. For some reason, though, I doubted that the creature would remain satisfied for long with just a few drops.

If your definition of long encompasses the time length of two and a half seconds, then I was wrong. I would have rather defined it as a few minutes, though, or even better – a few hours. I threw a fireball in front of the thing to slow it down, igniting a couple of bags filled with rotting food. I also observed that I thought of the action of throwing a fireball as, well, normal. It was becoming a habit and I wasn't sure whether that was a good thing. Unfortunately, flames in real life tend not to behave like impenetrable walls that stick around for ten minutes even though there isn't anything that can fuel the fire. All in all, the net effect of my little display was not much bigger than to anger the creature even more, and it responded in a properly predatory fashion – by charging me. Harry didn't mention anything about the physical abilities of what he termed vampire, so I took an estimate. Sixty miles per hour at least, weighing at a hundred kilos, plus the swing of a professional boxer… solving differential equations while running and at the brink of physical exhaustion isn't my specialty, but let's just say that however many orders of magnitude my estimate was off by, the hit would still leave me splattered on the floor with a dozen internal hemorrhages and three times that many broken bones.

The point of impact, I decided, would be within two seconds. I had to time it just right, and the burning in my lungs and legs wasn't particularly helpful to my concentration. My mind made a decision to raise the priority of physical exercise. I made it shut up, because it wasn't relevant to my current situation and tensed. I managed to jump sideways within ten milliseconds of the creature hitting me. I would very much like to say that it was due to my exceptional rationality skills, but to be fair, I had tried to deliberately overestimate it and leave myself a leeway of a second. Apparently, I had to revise my model of vampires yet again.

Now, I was pretty sure the creature expected me to jump. Predators have the nasty knack of predicting their prey's behavior, or else they'd starve to death. I was hoping, though, that its evolved or otherwise acquired instincts did not include coping mechanisms for when potential food decided to throw a fireball in its face. For once, my estimation actually turned out to be correct. As I was flying through the air, I stretched out my right hand and when it passed less than two inches from the creature's face I visualized a fireball, but instead of the picture I had used before, I decided to go for a mix of napalm and thermite. This wasn't a conscious decision, or a calculated one, because creating a compound like thermite out of thin air, while not impossible, would require a fusion reactor with the intensity of ten suns and I'm pretty sure that I didn't have one of those. Nevertheless, the creature's face exploded in flames so hot that they were unbearable even after I landed a couple of feet away. I crawled away from it and realized that it wasn't screaming, even though having your face melted in the quite literal sense should be pretty agonizing. I guessed my attack had been super effective.

I climbed to my feet and turned around. The black thing, and looking at it close I was pretty sure it was exactly what Dresden described as vampire, didn't have a face anymore, or a head for that matter. It didn't look like it would take a long for the rest of the body to follow. I sighed. Had I really just created a fire several times as strong just by imagining napalm and thermite? The visual confirmation was certainly there. The sanity confirmation was on strike and refused to comment.

"You're just as persistent as my master warned me," a voice said, which was followed by a clicking sound and the feeling of something pressing against the back of my head.

"Turn around, slowly."

Great, the situation just couldn't have gotten any messier at that point. Well, alright, it could, but I would have much preferred if it didn't. I complied with the instruction and turned to see a hooded figure holding a freaking Desert Eagle pointed at my head. My imagination treated me to an image of myself with a marble-sized hole in my brain, which needless to say didn't contribute much to my mental health.

"You, young man, are rapidly turning into more trouble than you're worth," he said without any emotion whatsoever.

"And what, exactly, am I worth," I asked, unsettled.

"You wouldn't even comprehend the arcane forces that are rising up around us," he said and it sounded a bit reverent.

Great, a generic response. The smartass part of my brain was beginning to reassert control, which, under the circumstances, wasn't a very healthy idea. I was helpless to stop my words though.

"Well," I said slyly, "if I can comprehend electromagnetism, I'm pretty sure I can handle the 'arcane' forces."

The hooded man snarled in anger and before I could've blinked once, he flipped the gun in his hand and swung it at me. And while a professional swing of the hand looked pretty fast on a perceptual level, it could not even contend with the firing of a few hundred thousand neurons. Now, in my stream of consciousness I didn't have time to be more than mildly startled, but the other parts of my brain which I didn't have deliberate control over seemed to have an idea of what to do. I suddenly felt drained and exhausted, remarkably similar to the last few moments that I remembered of the previous night and the man toppled forward. He screamed in absolute pain and started writhing, though in my state I barely registered it. I stumbled towards the exit of the alley. There was a distant sound, barely a whisper to my perception, which took me a few tries to process.

"Ivian! Ivian!"

* * *

><p><strong><em>Harry Dresden<em>**

"Excuse me while I puke my guts out," Ivian said and opened the passenger window of the Beetle. I turned my head around while he was making retching sounds and looked at the alley where I'd found him. All that was left of the event were a few red drops, a pile of ash and a patch of molten concrete.

"I feel like crap," he said. I started the engine and kicked the Beetle into motion.

"Well, you should," I told him. "You've just expended a ridiculous amount of power and I'm really surprised that I didn't find you unconscious or worse."

"How reassuring. What did I do to that man?"

My mood suddenly darkened.

"You overloaded every pain receptor in his body and tried to fry his brain," I said evenly. "All at the same time."

If Ivian had looked sick before, it paled in comparison to what my words did. His face completely drained of blood, turning it almost ghostly white. His eyes widened in shock, so much in fact that the pupils grew to twice their normal size.

"Oh," he said, almost inaudibly, but with a clearly distinguishable tone of repulsion. "Oh crap," and that's all the words he managed before sticking his head out of the window and puking even more right on the street as the car was moving, though I knew not where his stomach found the extra material. A few pedestrians looked at him in disgust, but no one called out. He slowly turned back towards me.

"I," he said, "that… that was really…" and then he passed out.

_Poor fellow, _I thought, _he's in way over his head and don't you know what that's like, Harry. _In an act of self-defense, Ivian had broken one of the laws of magic and come very close to breaking a second one. The council was going to be very much pissed if they ever found out. But was I going to tell them? I was, after all, a warden of the White Council and it was my duty to report any such violations, yet there was a part of me that didn't want to get this boy into any more trouble after what he had already gone through.

I decided I would postpone any judgment until I confront Ivian about it, which, given how he had managed to completely exhaust himself twice in the span of 24 hours by using too much magic, might not happen for some time. He certainly needed rest.

The drive home was uneventful and I managed to avoid the rush hour at the end of the work day. I parked my car in front of the old boarding house that contained my apartment. It was made completely out of wood and was one of the few such buildings in Chicago that had managed to survive until now. Yes, it had the occasional leak, and the wooden walls creaked whenever it got windy, which in this city was pretty much all the time, but the rent was cheaper than most other places. Besides, it was the only apartment I've held onto for more than a few months since I started living on my own. I was used to being here.

I got out of the Beetle and came over to the passenger's side to pull Ivian out. He was skinny, true, but tall enough that carrying him would be impossible. I did not want a repeat of last night when I almost broke my neck trying to move him down the stairs. We stumbled slowly and very carefully on the way down to the basement and managed to get to my apartment without any broken bones. I laid him down on the couch and went to the bathroom to get a shower. I didn't have a water heater in my apartment, or any other work of modern engineering for that matter. Wizards and technology don't really mix well – it has something to do with the field of magic surrounding them. If something about a piece of equipment can go wrong, it most certainly will when a wizard's around. I preferred not to have the water heater explode in my face while I showered, so I endured cold water instead, not that I wasn't used to it.

After a refreshing shower and a change of clothing, I returned back to the living room to find Ivian awake and sitting. I stared at him, disbelieving. He definitely should not have had enough strength to remain awake. Either he had ridiculous magical talent for a newbie, or much more likely I had overestimated how exhausted he had been.

"You're upright," I said.

"Yes, for some reason I couldn't sleep," he said and rolled his eyes for ironic effect.

"Are you feeling well?"

"Well? Certainly, I'm feeling as well as one can be after torturing another human being to death," he said, disgusted.

"You didn't kill the man, Ivian."

"Really," he asked and perked up. I nodded affirmative. "Great, so I only caused an incalculable amount of suffering instead of twice an incalculable amount. I feel so much better about myself."

"You can feel angsty all you want," I said, "after we've finished the conversation."

That made him pause. He looked up at me for a few moments and then shook his head.

"You're right, Harry, I gain nothing from complaining about causing harm that I cannot undo now." He thought for a moment. "The best thing I can do is make sure never to inadvertently use that again. And I would very much appreciate it if you answer a few questions."

I had never seen anyone compose himself from an angsty teenager mode in the span of five seconds. I told Ivian to go ahead and ask, a bit of uncertainty creeping in my voice. I didn't really want to waste another fifteen minutes reformulating my answer a dozen times.

"I'm not an expert neuroscientist," he continued," but I can reasonably conclude that if what I did to the man acted in the fashion that you described it would be pretty fatal. What happened after I spaced out?"

"I was in the same block as you on business with the Chicago PD and had just started on my way home, when I heard the Red Court vampire," I said, omitting the use of the tracking spell. "When I arrived there, you had already done most of the work and I saw the man screaming and writhing on the ground. I managed to stop your spell before it had done too much damage."

"I would ask how you did that," he said and sighed, "but I think that it would be a very drawn-out conversation. More importantly, did you find out who my attacker was?"

"No, he blew himself up."

Ivian raised his eyebrows.

"Are you sure you're not exaggerating here?"

"Well," I said, "he didn't really explode, just said something in the line of 'you will never find out my master's secrets' and used some talisman which disintegrated him to dust along with all the evidence."

"Generic villainy response plus seppuku," Ivian said, shaking his head, "and here I thought that one could only find that in literature."

"Fanaticism and wits don't mix really well."

"Good point. One could also apparently extend that to self-preservation in the more extreme cases."

It made no sense, though. Not the man's behavior, but the fact that Ivian had been attack by red court vampires twice in the span of the day, and encountered a fanatic of the on top of that. To call that a coincidence would be to stretch the term so far that it rips open and bleeds to death. I got a queasy feeling at the thought of this new cult being in league with the red court. I was still missing a lot of the pieces.

"Is there something that you're not telling me," I asked Ivian.

"Given your tone of voice, I suppose you mean - am I lying about my role in recent events?"

He could be pretty direct about it, I'll grant him that, but the penchant for strictness in one's expressions was getting slightly annoying.

"I assure you that I don't see any gain in hiding information from you, considering how you saved my life. Besides, I do not lie, as a matter of principle and not having to juggle a few hundred 'realities'", he said, the emphasis on that last word almost making it sound slightly contemptuous. "But no, I don't have any physical evidence to convince you, so it's up to you to decide on how to test each possibility."

Of course, if he had been lying, he would've used exactly the same argument. I remembered how he had acted when I told him what his spell had done, though. It's pretty hard to fake such a reaction and seem genuine about it. Well, there was one way to find out, but not yet.

"Ivian, about the spell that you used," I began and considered whether he would believe my words. There didn't seem to be any way to tell, really, so I continued. "You broke one of the laws of magic."

He looked at me - just that. A brief glance at his eyes revealed that he was considering it. No angry objections, no immediate retorts, no anxious responses. He would question and scrutinize every little detail, but he refused to act like one in denial of the supernatural. He was certainly a strange fellow.

"My Occam priors cringe every time you mention casting a spell," he said. "I'll attribute some of that to irrational emotions. However, in the interest of me not storming off in anger, I do hope you mean legal law and not a physical one."

"What does physics have to do with magic," I asked and he shot me a murderous glare. Before he could respond, I continued, "but you're correct. It's one of the laws of the White Council – governing body of wizards," I added the last part hurriedly in anticipation of the question.

"Alright, you obviously do not want getting told that your plausibility is rapidly diminishing with every word. I'll let it slide, temporarily. So what, exactly, does the law state?"

"It's the third law of magic," I said. "Thou shalt not invade the mind of another."

Ivian raised his eyebrows.

"Well, that didn't sound entirely unreasonable… a bit overly archaic, though. What is the penalty for breaking it?"

"Oh, you know," I said conversationally, "beheading with a sword."

Ivian gulped.

"How very progressive – what is it, a remnant from the middle ages?"

"It hasn't changed since then," I told him. And indeed, no one had seen the need to modify the seven laws of magic since the White Council had been first established. They were few enough not to require maintenance and important enough to withstand the changes in society.

"Provided that you can convince me of the existence of said White Council," he said, "which, I might add, would not be achieved by scowling at me and showing a condescending attitude, then theoretically, what would one do to keep one's head on one's shoulders?"

I considered. There was but one exception to the verdict. Alternatively, I could just hide the truth. It's not something that I could do lightly, though, and for a very good reason. Twisting another mind with magic is not a particularly safe process, as such things go. A powerful spell like that cannot be used without affecting the mind of the caster as well. It doesn't matter whether you had good intentions or had done it accidentally to begin with, the end result would still be one evil warlock and a lot of debilitated victims. Unless, that is, it was not yet too late for Ivian, and that's where the way for being certain came.

"Ivian," I said firmly. "Look into my eyes."

We locked stares – he was scowling, of course. Before he could voice a question, though, there was a tugging sensation and the soul gaze began.

Eyes are the windows to the soul. Just looking into someone's eyes for a few seconds is enough to be considered an act of intimacy and creep out most strangers. When a wizard looks, though, this is taken to a whole new level entirely. You get to see the most private parts of the other person's being – their soul, the things that guide what they do. In return, they get to see you in the same complete and maddening detail. A soul gaze can be a truly jarring experience and the memory of it never fades. You can always recall the event perfectly, as if it had happened five seconds before.

My apartment vanished from view. In fact, everything vanished, leaving only me, Ivian and total darkness. A few moments passed, and lights began to flicker to life, impossibly small and distant. They looked like stars but I could not recognize any familiar patterns.

"Not single stars, but galaxies and clusters of galaxies," Ivian said.

That literally made me jump. Had he just read my thoughts?

"Yes. The connection that you just opened works both ways, Harry."

His voice had gotten more refined, more musical and definitely more serene. Where actors usually failed, he conveyed an incredibly deep wisdom.

"Deep wisdom. Everything is connected. Infinity is a number – an infinite number of infinitely stacked numbers."

Yeah, precisely that effect. He smiled.

"No, I would rather not be equated with deep wisdom if you would. Knowledge must be straight-forward, one inferential step at a time. Everything else might as well be a contest in obfuscation and needless display of verbal prowess."

It made sense, but arguing semantics even during a soul gaze was absolutely insufferable.

"As a general rule, Harry, I do not tolerate misunderstandings because of laziness. The human brain has a remarkable tendency to cache pretty much every thought that you repeat a few times. It saves a great amount of thinking, but also makes people not appreciate the steps taken to have the thought in the first place. It also makes us lazy and indignant about re-evaluating what we deem basic knowledge."

Good points or not, I saw no reason for Ivian to tell me that.

"Really – no reason whatsoever? Helping you on the path to rationality, while desirable, is not something I would attempt to do in a subjective minute. But there's something more obvious - have you forgotten the nature of this connection?"

I opened my mouth, and then closed it again, remembering that there wasn't any point. _You get to see the other person's soul, _I thought. For a moment, amusement flashed in Ivian's eyes.

"Ah, yes, the Christian soul," he intoned. "Actually, Harry, you get to see the thought process and values of the person. So, what in probability theory's name do you think that I'm doing by getting around the strange visual format and directly spelling out some of the concepts that guide my decisions?"

_Oh, _I thought, and my brain decided to leave it at that.

"It's not the most important reason why I'm engaging you in a conversation directly. You can figure out the actual core values by looking around or simply asking."

Engaging in a conversation. I have had mental images address me directly during a soul gaze, but to have someone fully aware of the soul gaze and read my thoughts to boot - I didn't know that such a thing was even possible. It's not like people usually went about sharing the details of such an intimate experience, but still – not a single mention of mind reading?

"You're right, of course, "Ivian said. "Such a feature would be well documented if it was common, but the situation with you and Ivian is somewhat unique. I estimate that the probability of such an event happening for anyone close to you again is, as you will most likely phrase it, 'not bloody going to'."

Well, what made this such a special case, then? Also, had Ivian just referred to himself in the third person? It seemed like…

"An awfully big swell of ego? You can't avoid thinking about it after the fact, Harry. But no, it isn't that. I cannot tell you details, for I am already straining the link that you call soul gaze. Even though sharing information is something I hold very highly, not destroying your sanity outweighs it."

Gee, that didn't sound creepy at all.

"I'll say this – I am Ivian, in the sense that I share the same core concepts and terminal values. I am not, however, the nineteen year old boy that you know, spacing out on your couch at the moment. A refined algorithm, one might say, and let's leave it at that."

Ivian, or, well, whoever he was turned around and looked at the galaxies. They had gotten close enough that their shapes were easily discernable – ellipses, spirals and scythes, even some bizarre forms, all colored in splotches of yellow, white, blue and purple, with a few more exotic hues here and there. It was a truly dazzling display, which managed at the same time to make me feel both wonder and insignificance at the sheer size of the universe.

"Beautiful, isn't it, Harry?"

I nodded. He couldn't see me, but I knew the message had gotten across – mind reading and all that.

"One last thing – and the real reason why I am here in the first place," Ivian said, then turned around and looked straight into my eyes. "Protect Ivian, please. He is both innocent and a crucial piece in the events unfolding at the moment."

And I knew the words to be true. I _knew, _and not because of a vague sense of intuition or some false feeling of certainty appearing in my head – in that instant, I saw inside the other Ivian's mind and into the details of the last few days. I saw who Ivian was, how he was leading a life unaware of anything supernatural. I saw his interests and his studies. I saw how he had been in the wrong place and at the wrong time last night. I saw details of the attacks which I was not aware of – how he had unwittingly attracted attention the second time by experimenting with magic, how he had dealt with the second vampire. Most importantly, though, I saw exactly what I wanted – everything that my brain asked for was freely given, in honest and crystal clear detail. And if there is one good thing about a soul gaze, it would be fact that lying is not possible.

The instant passed, and after I blinked, Ivian was gone, leaving only the backdrop of space. I expected the soul gaze to end right there, but it did not. Instead, something weird happened – the galaxies started shifting around, rearranging in different patterns. They flickered and churned, completely chaotically. This went on for some time, unsettling in its weirdness, and I was starting to wonder what the hell was going on, when Ivian appeared again. Not the clear and authoritative image that had spoken to me a minute ago, but a semi-transparent, disheveled young teenager, wearing an absolutely ridiculous sweater. He was holding a felt-tip pen, complete with a transparent white board in front of him. He started scribbling furiously on it, d over d t, something or other. It made no sense to me, but I guessed it was math as it had that distinctive form. In the background, the chaos started dying down - the galaxies stopped flickering and changing appearance, and began moving in a more orderly fashion with each stroke of the pen.

It didn't take long for the picture to become relatively still again. Ivian, however, did not look satisfied. The image of him paced back and forth around the whiteboard.

"I need a better representation," he muttered.

Ghostly white lines began appearing all around us, making some sort of a net, stretching out infinitely in space, like a perfect grid. Then it started bending, not just anywhere, but around the shapes of the galaxies. Ripples started flowing along the lines and the tones of the picture shifted a bit.

"There," he said with evident satisfaction. "Thank you, Einstein."

Both Ivian and the stars vanished. For a few seconds, the darkness was absolute. Then, with the same complete lack of forewarning with which everything had disappeared, a ridiculously large hall appeared. I looked around and examined my surroundings. The style was modern, with unremarkable dark tiles covering the floor and walls and artificial white light coming from glass slots for lamps in the ceiling. While the decoration of the huge room wasn't anything impressive, though, the contents of the room were certainly capable of raising a few eyebrows. There were shelves and tables closely packed together along the whole span of the 300 or so yards of the hall. Some held neatly organized books, maps and charts of every description. Most of them held electronic equipment, though – computers and various other pieces of technology that I wasn't familiar with. Nothing exploded in a shower of sparks in the imaginary room and - relieved that in there at least I wouldn't break anything by virtue of my presence - I turned my attention back to the room and spotted Ivian walking along the tables. At some of them he stopped and hit a few keys on a computer, or pulled out a map and made a few adjustments. He slowly made his way towards the middle of the room where I was.

"What is the point of all that," I wondered out loud, "and why do you so diligently keep it up to date?"

Ivian gave no indication that he was listening to me. Whoever the other, more serene Ivian had been, he no longer seemed to be there. I was back to seeing a normal soul gaze, if anything happening around that boy could be called normal.

"Having an accurate map of the territory," Ivian said, "has proven to be quite effective for winning."

That almost made me jump. The image still didn't give any indication that it recognized me, but that last comment was suspiciously close to a direct answer to my question.

"Winning what," I probed.

My attention was drawn to a large screen on a table a few feet away from where I was standing. It flickered to life, displaying a picture of Earth. It started spinning furiously and the view zoomed out to show the whole solar system. Little dots started moving away from Earth, only a few at first, but rapidly increasing in number. Some of them orbited around in space, others landed on the rest of the planets.

Was that the real reason – colonizing space?

Something flashed in Ivian's eyes.

"Not that, just a means to an end," he said, now standing right next to me, and dismissed the image on the screen with a wave of his hand. It was instead replaced with more equations. He was still conspicuously ignoring me, looking everywhere else instead. "I want mankind to matter. To explore the world and use the resources for solving every important problem."

Suddenly, he stared at me directly.

"I want us to have Fun – until we have exhausted every single bit of useful energy in the universe, even beyond that if there is a way."

With a rushing sensation, the hall blurred and shifted back to my living room. I blinked several times, getting used to the real world again. Ivian had a wide-eyed expression of shock frozen on his face and for once, he was actually speechless. I didn't count on that lasting long, though.

"Alright," I said. "I'm even more confused than I was a minute ago, but I know one thing for certain – you are no dark wizard."

After that experience, I was pretty certain that there wasn't any need to report Ivian to the council. I had to teach him enough self-control for him not to call upon mind magic again by accident, but other than that I saw him posing no danger. No, he may have been a lot of things, but twisted an evil didn't belong to that list, however far you decide to extend it.


End file.
